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Joker: A great performance soiled by muddled narrative

Tyler Wilson For Coeur Voice | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 5 years, 3 months AGO
by Tyler Wilson For Coeur Voice
| October 16, 2019 1:00 AM

Let’s make one thing clear about “Joker” - Joaquin Phoenix is astonishing as the social outcast Arthur Fleck - the man who eventually becomes the most famous (and psychotic) supervillain in all of comic book lore.

The movie itself, directed and co-written by Todd Phillips, exists to showcase that performance but fails to clear basic storytelling benchmarks. It begins as a portrait of a broken man facing his worst demons but fumbles the arc where that sympathetic man becomes an irredeemable monster.

Even worse, Phillips uses the film’s gruesome violence to make vague statements about how society creates and reacts to such monsters. It’s such a confused vision - one that seems to both celebrate and demonize a “rich vs. poor” culture war, but then sometimes just wants to over-explain how Bruce Wayne eventually becomes an orphan.

The first act of “Joker” follows Arthur Fleck struggling in a rotting Gotham City circa 1981. He’s a creepy-though-seemingly-decent man living with multiple psychological issues stemming from childhood abuse. He cares for his bedridden mother (Frances Conroy, underutilized) and struggles to make ends meet as a lowly party clown while dreaming of becoming a stand-up comedian.

Then he loses his state-funded therapy and medication. Then he gets fired. Then some rich finance bros attack him on the subway.

There comes a point when the movie must turn from being a sad story about a sick man into a story of how that man becomes a sadistic instrument of evil. “Joker” has no idea how to dramatize this other than to have Arthur commit horrible acts of violence.

It’s not a very tidy transition, although Phillips attempts to use an embarrassing moment in a comedy club and some potential family history with Thomas Wayne (Bruce’s dad) to force Arthur down his violent path. It never comes together, and it forces Phoenix’s complex character work onto a contrived and reductive story arc.

Ultimately, “Joker” has nothing to say about Arthur Fleck or broken men like him. The movie tries by evoking much better movies, most especially Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver.” Whereas Scorsese’s masterpiece always provided the audience with a firm vision of how we’re supposed to think and feel about Travis Bickle, Phillips never frames Arthur Fleck with meaningful perspective.

It’s unfortunate, because Phoenix develops such a specific and nuanced character in terms of physicality, voice and pathos.

Just one example: Arthur has a medical condition in which he laughs uncontrollably in inappropriate situations, and Phoenix makes that laugh look and sound physically excruciating. It’s an element of the Joker that hasn’t been done in most major iterations.

That being said, very little of Phoenix’s Joker works as much of a precursor to some of those other depictions. Arthur, for example, doesn’t seem to have the capacity for the kind of criminal masterminding the likes of Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson and Mark Hamill have shown. In short, Batman wouldn’t have much trouble capturing this particular baddie.

The presence of a young Bruce Wayne in “Joker” inadvertently emphasizes the film’s central shortcoming. While Joker is an incredible antagonist in the comics and other media, the best Joker stories work because of how the character’s perspective and choices clash with those of Batman. While young Bruce makes a brief appearance here, the movie lacks a necessary counterpoint to the Joker’s descent into madness. This movie offers only destruction and chaos, which also happens to be pretty unpleasant to watch.

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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com. He is the co-host of “Old Millennials Remember Movies,” available everywhere you find podcasts.

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